Damien's breath shallowed as the room around him dissolved into pure nothingness. The ads, the neon, the stink of ozone all stripped away. His "palace" was never beautiful. It was dark and morbid. A place no sane human would ever step into. But Damien entertained himself with these every so often.
The world rebuilt itself in pieces. A single light flickered above the steel table. The air was damp, heavy with the stench of iron. Damien was inside the killer's construct now. His mind burned at the edges with intense pressure and strain, but he welcomed the pain. Each second felt like he was living the killer's gruesome act itself.
On the table lay his arsenal. None made by Humans. They pulsed faintly with the tinge of green. His gloved fingers reached over them. He didn't touch. He didn't need to.
I think about showing the victim mercy.
His hand clicked the ON switch on a handy chainsaw.
I bring the contraption to the victims ears, to give him a feeling of dread and fear. Only to snatch it away at the last second.
A loud sound is made as the chainsaw clutters against the ground as an advert jolts him.
Damien blinks, and finds himself in front of the T.V, completely shattered into a million pieces. He raises his hands, and sees blood creeping back into his wounds.
I have enhanced regeneration.
He smirks as he takes out a mini flamethrower off the table.
Therefore, I am God.
I start from his feet. I torch them as the pig starts to struggle. I hold him down easily with the restraints around his joints that cut deep into his flesh the more he struggles.
I move onto his restraints and mutilate them one by one. As I reach the head, I've already decided he'll be welcome to Hell.
-
"Beautiful symmetry… don't you think?"
Damien froze. That wasn't supposed to happen. The palace wasn't reactive. It was supposed to be entirely reflective. A replay of mental logic, not an entity.
He looked towards the darkness behind him. A figure stood there blurred, faceless, yet somehow smiling. It tilted its head with unsettling curiosity.
"Do you think it screamed?", the entity asked. The voice was calm. Amused. His voice echoed violently inside Damien's skull.
Damien clenched his fists. "This isn't real. You're not real."
"Neither are most things in this world." it said, almost puffing up his chest. The shape seemed to breathe through metal lungs.
"You came looking for me. Why?"
The question jolted something inside Damien. For a moment, the real world bled in—sirens, Xelthar's voice, the static of a commline. Then it vanished again.
He whispered, "To Feel."
The faceless killer stepped closer, its features glitching, forming and reforming between alien and human, between beauty and horror. "Then look deeper, human. You'll find me where the flesh meets the code."
The connection severed.
Damien gasped awake, slamming back into his own body. His head was drowsed with sweat, his heart thumping violently against his chest. The room was still. The corpse on display remained unchanged. But something new buzzed faintly in his commlink. An encrypted packet. Untraceable.
[MESSAGE: UNKNOWN SOURCE]:
"Nice to finally meet you."
Xelthar's mandibles clicked beside him, startled by the noise, as he rushed through the door.
"What happened!? Your vitals spiked off the charts!"
Damien stood still with his voice low. "The killer reached out to me."
A moment of silence followed. Then the alien's four eyes narrowed.
"That's not possible."
Damien looked down at the severed head, hollow eyes staring back. A trickle of green fluid dripped from the sockets like tears.
He muttered, almost to himself—"It is, when he's already inside the system."
Outside, the neon howled through the rain. It had officially begun.